A five-year-old boy who became a global symbol of controversy over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement has been reunited with his family in Minnesota after being detained with his father in a federal immigration operation, a U.S. lawmaker announced on Sunday.
Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, both asylum seekers from Ecuador, were arrested on January 20 in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, by officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the administration’s intensified immigration raids in the Twin Cities area. The pair were taken to a detention centre in Dilley, Texas, hundreds of miles from their home.
The boy’s detention sparked widespread public outrage after images showing Liam, clad in a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, surrounded by federal agents circulated on social media, quickly becoming a shorthand for the human cost of the government’s immigration crackdown.
On Sunday, Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro confirmed that the child and his father had been released and were safely back in Minnesota. “Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack,” Castro wrote on X (formerly Twitter), sharing photos from the father-son’s arrival.
The pair were freed following a weekend order from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who sharply criticised the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy in his ruling.
In his written opinion, Judge Biery said the case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children,” and rebuked the federal government for what he characterised as a profound disregard for constitutional protections.
During a visit to the detention centre last week, Congressman Castro relayed comments from Liam’s father, who said his son had been deeply affected by the ordeal. “His dad said that he hasn’t been himself,” Castro wrote on X, underscoring concerns about the child’s well-being.
In response to criticism, officials from the Trump administration framed the child’s detention differently, asserting that ICE agents took custody of the boy after his father attempted to flee from authorities. However, this account has been rejected by local officials and community leaders in Minnesota.
School administrators in Columbia Heights, where Liam was a preschooler, and immigration advocates described the removal of the boy and his father as an example of how enforcement efforts have crossed humanitarian boundaries. National figures, including several Democratic lawmakers, also condemned the incident, calling for limits on the detention of children and families in immigration enforcement.
Since news of the arrest broke, protests and public criticism have grown across the United States, with opponents of the Trump administration’s approach arguing that its tactics reflect a severe escalation in immigration policy enforcement.
After returning home, Castro reaffirmed his commitment to supporting families separated by deportation enforcement, saying, “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
